#OscarsSoWhite: Are the Academy Awards racist?
Every year, without fail, the Oscar nominations are met with a widespread cry of ‘the Academy is racist’. Time and time again, black actors and actresses are left unappreciated for their efforts in fantastic films. Last year it was David Oyelowo being snubbed for Best Actor for Selma. This year, it is Creed and Straight Outta Compton being almost completely shut out, despite being two of the bigger movies throughout the year. In a time when we are making great strides in trying to mend wounds and forgive the past, major events like the Academy Awards can go a long way to furthering progress, or holding it back. And when such an influential event is shutting out black men and women doing fantastic work in the field of cinema, the question MUST be asked; why is this happening?
As someone who follows the Academy Awards religiously and continues to preach the ceremony’s continued relevance, the racism arguments bother me. Does the Academy have a fundamental prejudice against black industry members, or is there an explanation for what is happening? In this article, I am looking to examine both sides of the argument and lay them out so we can get a clear look at what exactly these beliefs are. And when that is all done, I’ll give you my personal take on the issue and then leave you to do some thinking of your own. So, let’s go ahead and figure it out. Is the Academy racist?
Yes, they are.
Let’s go down this avenue of thought first. Let’s see why people believe the Academy is racist. Firstly there is the root of all the debate; the nominations. From what it seems, the #OscarsSoWhite trend came about in early 2015 when the nominations list snubbed the film Selma in particular. Despite being given a nomination for Best Picture, the story of Martin Luther King Jr. found itself absent from the Best Actor and Best Director categories. David Oyelowo, the actor who plays MLK, and Ava DuVernay, the director, received a lot of attention in the following weeks as they were the key players snubbed. With actors like Bradley Cooper in the Best Actor race for his performance in American Sniper, it is no wonder there was outrage. Cooper was good, don’t get me wrong, but anyone who has seen Selma knows that his nomination was a travesty when Oyelowo was left high and dry. As for DuVernay, the Best Director category is always far harder to judge than the Best Actor category, as we can’t necessarily critique an on-screen performance, but that still doesn’t counter the fact that DuVernay was incredible and without a doubt could have received a nomination for Selma.
This year, it is the same issue. Straight Outta Compton was the 18th highest grossing film of the year with $161 million, which also made it the highest grossing musical biopic of all time! Creed was also a heavy hitter, not as strong as Compton but then it still crossed the 100m mark with a total of $106 million. These films were, by all accounts, box office successes, and they did not by any means fly under the radar. When nominations time came, both films only heard their name read out once, but the problem here runs deeper than that. Creed had a black director, a black lead actor, a black supporting actress and a white supporting actor. Judging from the outrage, I’m sure you can figure out which was the only one to get nominated (Hint: it was the white guy). Similarly with Straight Outta Compton, a film that features five black men in the leading roles only manages to get a Best Original Screenplay nomination. That is four people up for an Oscar for writing the film, and do you think any of them are black? Yeah, that’s right! None of them are. All four are white.
Here we can already see an enormous problem. The leaked Sony exec emails a few years back revealed that an unnamed Sony producer believed that Denzel Washington’s film The Equalizer wasn’t performing well enough overseas because This represents a seemingly inherent Hollywood belief that black people do not sell tickets unless the consumers are black, hence a poor overseas performance. This train of thought is, quite simply, backward, and as we saw from Straight Outta Compton and Creed, it’s not true. I live in Australia, and I can tell you that we all got excited when a new Rocky film came our way, and following the release of Straight Outta Compton we were all blurting out the lyrics to N.W.A. songs with no clue if we were allowed to use the n-word in them. These movies made a lot of money, so it’s clear that black people do sell tickets. So why is it that these films continue to be ignored in awards season?
Breaking away from an objective view for a second, I have seen both films and, honestly, was really disappointed that Ryan Coogler didn’t receive a Best Director nomination for directing Creed. I also feel that the film was more than worthy of filling the vacant ninth slot in the Best Picture race.
But back to the argument, things got worse for the Academy when we found out exactly who is in there. shows that of the 6,028 Academy Award voters, 94% are white. On top of that, 76% are male and the average age is 63. This means that the majority of people voting on these awards are white men in their 60’s. I don’t think I need to get into that any more, it already sounds pretty bad. points out that this would make the Academy the eighth whitest state of the United States. African Americans and Latinos make up 30% of the entire US population, and yet are less than 4% of the Academy’s voters.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, right? The Academy has acknowledged black actors and actresses, I mean, didn’t Lupita Nyong’o win Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years A Slave? Hell, didn’t that movie win Best Picture?! The answers are yes and yes, but the problem is in the name of the movie. ‘Slave’. It seems that these days, the only way for a black actor or actress to get their Oscar is to play a slave or some kind of mistreated individual. In other words, they have to play a black character, not just a character that happens to be black. Why does the Academy only nominate these fantastic actors and actresses unless they are playing some sort of slave-like figure?
Ultimately, there is much ground for concern. A group of predominantly 60-year-old white males continually refuse to acknowledge black performers in financially and critically successful films, in roles that many have expected them to win awards for. Seeing all of that summed up, it’s no stretch of the imagination to believe that racism is the reason behind this. But luckily for you, you don’t have to stretch any imagination, because now we’re going to look at why people believe that this isn’t racism at all, and how there could be a very simple explanation for it.
No, they are not.
The Academy Awards are the most prestigious of awards in the entertainment industry. When a performer wins a Golden Globe, they get to be a headline for a week. But when they win an Oscar, they are immortalized forever. Every year, when Oscar Sunday approaches, more and more people join the bandwagon of pessimists yelling “The Oscars are irrelevant! They mean nothing anymore!” And yet we all still watch them and eagerly await the reveal of what film has won Best Picture, and whether Leonardo DiCaprio will finally get his statuette. We still care, because the Oscars still mean something. That’s why this argument is even happening. Because the Oscars truly matter, and we want them to work. If we believed the Golden Globes were racist, or the Screen Actors Guild Awards were racist, do you think there’d be this much public outcry? No, of course not. The Oscars are still important, and so this question of their integrity is also important. Let’s see what possible explanations there are for the lack of color in the nominations by going through my points for why they are racist and countering them one-by-one.
The first thing I wrote was about the root of the problem; the nominations. I spoke of Selma’s snubs and how both Creed and Straight Outta Compton were largely ignored. This is an interesting point to argue against, because film is a subjective medium, and so the Academy can always simply say “We just didn’t think it was good enough” and no one can tell them they’re wrong. However, there are other points to be made. The year that David Oyelowo was snubbed for Best Actor, the five nominees were as follows; Bradley Cooper (American Sniper), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game), Eddie Redmayne (the winner for The Theory of Everything), Michael Keaton (Birdman) and Steve Carell (Foxcatcher). You know what is strangely absent from this list, aside from David Oyelowo? Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal’s performance as Lou Bloom in Nightcrawler was critically acclaimed, and Gyllenhaal also happens to be white. This right here shows that sometimes the Academy just aren’t in touch with what the general expectation is, and that people don’t get nominated purely because there are ONLY five slots available. Oyelowo and Gyllenhaal both gave incredible performances, but so did Cumberbatch, Redmayne, Keaton and Carell.
I remember at the time being on online chat forums such as Reddit to see people discuss the nominations without bringing up the #OscarsSoWhite controversy. When looking at it objectively, everyone was just as annoyed about Gyllenhaal’s snub, if not more so, than Oyelowo’s. The bottom line is, every year people get snubbed and not just black people. White people get snubbed too. But this poses the question of why do black people always get snubbed?
Before we get into that, let’s address the next point brought up in the Yes, they are section. This was the issue of these films making plenty of money at the box-office, proving that black protagonists can sell tickets, and yet still not being acknowledged. This one is actually a fairly easier explanation than the others. There is no real correlation between the amount of money a film makes and how it performs at the Academy Awards. This year The Force Awakens has become one of the highest grossing films of all time, but that didn’t guarantee it any Oscars. In fact, recent history shows us that the Best Picture nominated movies (and in turn, the ones that are nominated for the major categories) don’t perform all that well at the box office. Last year’s Best Picture winner Birdman grossed $68 million overall, and 2012 Best Picture winner The Artist grossed a mere $47 million. In fact, ever since the release of Jaws in 1975 and the gradual rise of the blockbuster, these Oscar-nominated films have been grossing less and less. All this goes to show is that ticket sales don’t translate into Oscars; otherwise The Hurt Locker wouldn’t have beaten Avatar in 2010.
But now we have to get back to the nitty gritty, the serious argument that isn’t so easily explained. The Academy is predominantly filled with 60-year-old white males. We’ve been over this over and over again, but this is such an important figure. This is the basis of why many people believe the Academy is racist, because who is more likely to be racist than 60-year-old white men? Now, I am making absolutely no accusations of these Academy members. I am not personally affiliated with any of them and cannot speak to their character, I can merely speak to the numbers and to the common mindsets. And the common mindset that these men are likely racist is, quite simply, racist. Though likely spawned through past experiences with people of that same age and race, the assumption that these men are racist is highly unfair and is grounded only in the fact that they aren’t nominating black actors. And now it’s time to really get into why they aren’t nominating black actors. Plot twist; it isn’t racism.
It’s laziness. A ahead of the Academy Awards showed us some fairly shocking statistics, the key one being that 10% of the Academy did not watch Selma. When I read this, I was momentarily convinced the Academy was racist and I had answered the question. But then I stopped and really thought about the issue, and then continued researching. This is the issue that causes the argument in the first place. Every finds a bit of information (such as the Los Angeles Times survey from earlier) and they stick to it without doing any more reading, believing they have found the answer to it all. The rest of the Hollywood Reporter poll shows that there was also 7% that didn’t watch Whiplash and 7% that didn’t watch The Theory of Everything. Now, 7% isn’t quite 10%, so sure. Selma still had it the worst of the bunch. But again, this is not racism. We look deeper, we continue researching, and we find out why this is so. And the answer is simple; the Oscar voters are really, really weird.
In , we get a wide range of quotes from Oscar voters, including a declaration that “I’m not voting for Nightcrawler– that was really unpleasant” and “Whiplash is offensive – it’s a film about abuse and I don’t find that entertaining at all”. To each their own, but here we can already get a glimpse of the Academy’s train of thought. Some films are too violent (which explains by Gone Girl got snubbed. Man, that movie was good!), some too controversial for them. If it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, it might be “too unpleasant”. So, would you like to get back to talking about the movie where black people are beaten relentlessly, which is in no way, shape or form controversial or ‘unpleasant’? Now we come to the most important part of the article. In relation to Selma, one Oscar voter said “I’ve got to tell you, having the cast show up in T-shirts saying ‘I can’t breathe’ [at the New York premiere] – I thought that stuff was offensive”. Okay, this person found it offensive. As we read just before, they find all sorts of things offensive. Now here comes the kicker. “Did they want to be known for making the best movie of the year or for stirring up [expletive]?”
Okay, now it makes sense. The cast of Selma turned up to the New York premiere of the film wearing shirts with “I can’t breathe” on them, in relation to the controversial Eric Garner incident. Sure, this can be interpreted as racist. Maybe this particular Oscar voter felt police were justified in the Eric Garner incident and that is why s/he took offence to what happened at the premiere. But then again, it is just as likely (even more so) that s/he felt those kinds of politics had no place in the promotion of a film, and this put the voter off of watching Selma. If nothing else, this paragraph has shown that the Academy isn’t so much racist as they are just oversensitive. They didn’t like Whiplash because it was about abuse, which made it unpleasant for them. God knows why they didn’t watch The Theory of Everything, maybe they felt wheelchairs are offensive to people who can stand? But Whiplash alone shows us some silly reasoning behind why they do and don’t watch films, and potentially the 10% not watching Selma was for the same reasons. Too unpleasant, too controversial, the film because a political cry and not a film, any of these things can explain it. We don’t need to immediately say “racism!” and not consider anything else.
And now, it is time to address the final point made in the Yes, they are section. This was the point regarding the roles that black people are actually praised for, and how the Academy only ever seems to deem them worthy of an Oscar when they play a slave of some sort. The key example was Lupita Nyong’o winning Best Supporting Actress for 12 Years A Slave, and that film’s ultimate Best Picture triumph. But this is what I find interesting; another common complaint is that white men are always winning Oscars for playing famous white men in biopics. A perfect example is Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything last year in which he played Stephen Hawking. What I find incredibly interesting, and somewhat amusing, is that the slave Oscars are considered racism, while the white male biopic Oscars are simply the Academy being boring and only liking the one type of movie. Biopics. Biopics, biopics, biopics. Biopics are the issue in this situation, not racism. We can gather from wins for The Theory of Everything and The King’s Speech that the Academy, quite simply, loves biopics. Historical films. They love history. 12 Years A Slave is exactly one of these films. It is a historical biopic, and we all know that African Americans in history have had it extremely rough, and that slavery was one of the biggest struggles they faced. Is it any surprise that in these historical films, the black actors and actresses are playing slaves? The issue of black performers always winning for playing slaves and white performers always winning for playing famous white men are the exact same issue; the Academy are suckers for historical biopics. The only difference is that we point and one and say “poor taste”, yet we point at the other and say ‘racism’.
A final point for this argument is that ‘racism’ is not singular to the mistreatment of black people. ‘Racism’ refers to the mistreatment of any race. In 2014 12 Years A Slave was the Best Picture. In 2009 Slumdog Millionaire was Best Picture and in 2007 Crash was Best Picture. Last year Alejandro González Iñárritu won three Oscars in the one night. The year before, Alfonso Cuarón won Best Director, and Ang Lee the year before that. We haven’t had a traditional white guy win Best Director since 2010. Many people say the Academy is racist, but they clearly don’t see how well non-Americans and non-Brits are doing at the Oscars. It is also worth noting that Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the current head of the Academy, is a black woman.
The Verdict
The Academy is racist. The Academy is not racist. Both of these statements could be deemed true, if you were to take one side of either argument and not see the other. But at the end of the day, we simply cannot know. My personal take on it is that no, the Academy is not racist. I think that what many people see as racism is simply the Academy being oversensitive, somewhat stupid and thinking in illogical ways. But racist? No. We look at how often black actors are not nominated, such as David Oyelowo for Selma, but we blind our eyes to Jake Gyllenhaal, who has also been snubbed for Nightcrawler. Why do we talk about one and ignore the other? It is because we do not look deep enough. It is because we hear one piece of information and make a judgment on the whole situation. We hear that a black actor was snubbed from a category, but we don’t stop and think about who else was snubbed.
We also don’t stop and consider the implications of our complaints. Many are saying “Couldn’t you give just one nomination to a black actor? Is it really that hard?” I believe that, referencing back to the Guardian article, this Oscar voter put it best when he said “when a movie about black people is good, members vote for it. But if the movie isn’t that good, am I supposed to vote for it just because it has black people in it?” This is the most important point of them all. Should they vote for a film, even if they don’t think it was good enough, just because everyone is angry that black performers aren’t being acknowledged enough? There should be no quota they have to fill when choosing their nominees and voting for their winners. They should be voting for who they genuinely believe should win. Just because you or I watch Selma and think “What a fantastic film! What a great actor” doesn’t mean an Oscar voter is required to say it was one of the five best performers of the year. This is another thing we often forget. There are only five slots, and to say that a black actor without a doubt should’ve been in the top five of the entire year, in an industry absolutely dominated by white people and overflowing with white performances, is rather silly. It is working against the numbers big time. David Oyelowo was fantastic, but so was Jake Gyllenhaal. We can’t say one was racism and the other was bad luck.
I’m not saying the Academy is racist. I’m not saying they aren’t. I have no clue. But from all that we’ve just seen, I’m going to be optimistic and say that I believe they are not. Many of the arguments made have rather simple explanations, and the very nature of the argument is all wrong. We can’t expect that a black performer will just be handed a nomination. And we can’t expect that when they earn it, they will be given the nomination because in 2015 there were 7 men who earned it, and two of them had to miss out. Oyelowo and Gyllenhaal drew the short straws. The alternative to this system is that the Academy begins filling a quota. That they actively make sure that they have people of color nominated every year, and this is all wrong. The Academy Awards are supposed to be about acknowledging the very best of each field of film. The day the Academy begins selecting winners based on color, rather than merit, is the day the Academy Awards truly do become racist.
The cast of Straight Outta Compton [front row] posing with their real-life counterparts [back row].
A snapshot of the Academy's membership
The five nominees for Best Actor at the 2015 Academy Awards
The findings of the Hollywood Reporter's poll
Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu accepts his Academy Award for Best Directing in 2015 for ‘Birdman’